


stolen and unwound

by magicites



Category: Kamen Rider Build
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, banjou/sento in the far off background, takes place after episode 28
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 14:37:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15642774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicites/pseuds/magicites
Summary: “Hello, everyone! Mii-tan has a question for you all,” Misora says. The words are there, but the joy that Misora embodies in her idol persona is gone. “Why do the people that Mii-tan loves the most keep lying to her?”Sawa seeks Misora's forgiveness.





	stolen and unwound

**Author's Note:**

> I love Sawa, and I LOVE her relationship with Misora. Women having a significant relationship with each other and existing entirely outside of the male characters??? Where has this BEEN all my life and toku shows why have you denied me this before now?
> 
> So here's this.

Hours after the red fades from Sawa’s face, Misora’s slap continues to sting. The skin of her cheek stops hurting after ten minutes, but the ache within her chest feels like a stab wound by nightfall.

Sawa sits in her lonely apartment, a small studio that has never celebrated any life but her own. Her accolades line the wall, though the awards for outstanding journalism are specks of dust compared to the Nanba Industries logo that hangs on her wall. Underneath her desk is a small box full of additional awards and certificates that she’s never been able to put up because of it.

There is no love here, only reminders of a starved childhood and a lonely adolescence. Once upon a time, this was a place that Sawa took great pride in. It was a shrine to her survival, a dedication to the company that brought her up from absolutely nothing.

Now, it feels like a death sentence.

Sawa picks up a small frame by her bed. Twenty Nanba Children look directly at the camera. Twenty unsmiling faces. Twenty pairs of empty eyes, hers own included. This photo used to fill her with pride. She was more than a survivor; she was a  _ victor _ .

Everyone had to prove themselves in some way. She was far from the strongest. The scars given to her by the Remote Brothers (one knife mark on her stomach, one burn mark on her ankle) are testaments to that. Nor was she the most intelligent. She couldn’t compare to the way Utsumi could solve a problem in his mind before someone finished telling it to him.

But Sawa was the most resourceful. No one else could gather intelligence as effortlessly as her. She knew just enough to distinguish the important information from the drivel, but it wasn’t her job to create information. All she had to do was steal it. She was the best actress of all the children, able to play with other’s minds and emotions the same way a musician could pluck the keys of a piano with their eyes closed.

Nanba Children didn’t have friends. The other children were never confidantes. They were obstacles to overcome, so Sawa overcame them.

When she thinks of Misora, of Sento and Banjou and even Kazumin, she does not see obstacles. She sees their smiles and hears their laughter. She feels their convictions, their desires to stop this war and make the world a better place.

Sawa sets the frame face-down on the table, so the Nanba Children can no longer see what she does. She is not beholden to a place that treated her as a tool, not when she knows what it’s like to be treated as human. She throws a few days’ worth of clothing and toiletries into a bag and flings it over her shoulder.

On her way out, she rummages through her kitchen and grabs a few more items. Instant noodles for Banjou, and peach gummies for Misora. She isn’t sure if she has anything for Sento, but at least Kazumin will be happy if she can convince Misora to smile at him.

Sawa will be happy if she can convince Misora to even look at her.

The train is empty this time of night, and Sawa is grateful for the extra space. The heaters underneath the seats blow warm air onto her ankles, a welcome relief from the cold outside and the cold within herself. She pulls her coat a little tighter around herself and listens to the conductor rattle off station names.

She makes it to the cafe without a problem. The door is locked, but her key still works. Some part of her expected the locks to have changed, but the fact that they haven’t fills her with a tiny, hesitant hope.

The door opens with a small groan, but its small protest is drowned out by Banjou’s snores from somewhere deeper in the cafe. She passes by Kazumin’s sleeping form, curled up on a mat she had bought him when he decided to stay in Touto. She catches a glimpse of metal and colorful plastic, three bright primary colors, from within his closed fist.

She smiles at the sight, though she knows he can’t see it. His loyalty is so foreign to her, though with each passing day it feels a little more familiar. He’ll never realize how influential he truly is.

As she makes her way down to the lab, she passes by Banjou and Sento. They sleep on identical mats, side by side, their backs to each other. Banjou’s snores are overpowering, but Sento wakes up just enough to throw something over his shoulder at Banjou, finally shutting him up.

Somehow, it’s the silence that wakes Sento up. Sawa freezes when he opens his eyes, but he smiles once he registers her presence. Too smart for his own good, he mouth’s Misora’s name and points deeper into the lab, towards a soft glow in the distance.

She nods her thanks and carefully steps past them, looking away as Sento rolls over and curls into Banjou’s back. She’s spent too long reading other people not to know about the gentle secret that exists between them. Still, she will not voice that relationship to life until Banjou is ready to voice it himself. It takes time for the undergrowth to rise up after a fire ravages the fields. Broken hearts do not heal quickly.

Sawa reminds herself of that as she enters the lab. Misora sits at the computer, the bags under her eyes outlined by the glow of the computer screen. She does not acknowledge Sawa’s presence as she enters, her eyes firmly glued on the screen in front of her.

“Hello, everyone! Mii-tan has a question for you all,” Misora says. The words are there, but the joy that Misora embodies in her idol persona is gone. “Why do the people that Mii-tan loves the most keep lying to her?”

Sawa was eleven years old when she was first stabbed. The weapon was a kitchen knife, a smaller one that she had used the previous day to peel potatoes for that night’s dinner. Another Nanba Child, a girl half her weight but twice her speed, was instructed to evade being captured, while Sawa was instructed to apprehend her at all costs. A routine training exercise.

She still remembers the icy gazes on her back as the knife twisted into her gut, propelled by fear and a child’s desire to please. Somehow, the betrayal in Misora’s eyes hurt more than the memory of that wound.

There is no right answer to Misora’s question. No way to soften the blow, especially not to a young woman who was forced into hiding and decided to fight back by giving people hope. Misora is more than an idol. She is an icon of resistance.

They spoke earlier that day, but forgiveness does not always come effortlessly.

Almost anything that Sawa could say feels like an excuse, so she says the one thing that isn’t. “I’m sorry.”

Misora finally looks at Sawa. Her eyes are misty, though even that does nothing to quell the raw hurt there. “I  _ trusted  _ you.”

Sawa has perfected the art of crying. Her crocodile tears can be summoned at a moment’s notice, if need be. Where she cannot soldier through with brute force, she weaponizes others’ guilt and sympathy. When she cannot be the victor, she paints herself as the victim. Her own tears make that so much easier.

Yet she feels her eyes burn, tears gathering at the edges of her vision despite her best attempts to push them away.

“I know you did,” Sawa says, “and I’m sorry.”

Misora turns off the computer and gets to her feet, her fists at her sides. Sawa’s body tenses on instinct, ready to deflect a hit or dodge an attack.

But Sawa forces herself to relax. The world outside is a battleground, but this one place is a sanctuary. That lesson has rooted deeper within her than any scar ever could.

“No more secrets,” Misora says. “No more lies, no more double-crossing us. And no more,” Misora sniffles as a few tears escape down her cheeks, “No more leaving like you’re never going to come back!”

There is someone else who needs to hear this message as badly as Sawa does, but that man is not here, so Sawa hears it for the both of them. She listens for every person who has betrayed Misora, takes the blame for every secret that has ever wrenched this girl’s heart in two.

It’s the least she can do.

“I won’t ever leave again, if you’ll let me stay,” Sawa says. She recognizes grace when she sees it, especially after living a life where second chances were a fantasy she could never afford to believe in. Being offered a third chance should be impossible, but she feels the gravity of Misora’s forgiveness as a pair of arms wrap around her.

The secrets come out, one by one. Sawa tells Misora secrets that she thought would accompany her to the grave. She recounts memories that constantly play in the dark room of her mind, snapshots of memory that she once thought were destined to remain in darkness.

There is pain as they come to light, but there is also freedom, like poison evaporating from her veins. To secure someones else's trust was easy. To trust someone else herself was a beautiful, terrifying struggle.

Later on, Sawa tells Misora about her scars. About a childhood split between being treated as a weapon and as an animal.

Misora rages. “You didn’t deserve that!” she spits.

Sawa has never heard those words before. She has never deserved decency, not once.

She feels its truth echo when, a few hours later, Misora places a hand on hers. Yet when Sawa meets her eyes, she realizes that someone else looks back at her.

Her voice is ancient and powerful when she speaks, loaded with a fury that feels like a slow-burning inferno. “Whatever you were before, you are not now. Let yourself be free,” says the queen of a world before theirs.

The queen speaks again. Not a command, but a plea. “You and these other humans hold a great love for each other,” she says with a fondness that speaks to her own memories, ones that Sawa cannot even imagine. “Cherish those bonds. They are the only things that can withstand the flames you will soon face. Nothing else will last.”

Nothing else will last.

Later, when Misora has returned to herself and the queen lies dormant again, Sawa recites those words to her. They feel so foreign on her tongue, a rebellion against everything ingrained in her since childhood.

When she hears Misora, clad in idol gear, recite her own version of that message to her thousands of devoted fans, they ring true unlike anything else she has ever heard.

Nothing else will last. If all else leaves, these moments will stay.

How heretical, Sawa thinks, watching Misora smile at the camera. But how beautiful.


End file.
